An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Threat actors are stealing sensitive data from organizations by breaching end-of-life appliances made by cybersecurity company SonicWall. Incident responders from Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant said on Wednesday that they have uncovered an ongoing campaign by an unidentified threat group that leverages credentials and one-time password (OTP) seeds stolen during previous intrusions -- allowing the hackers to regain access to organizations even after security updates are installed. [...]

The campaign is targeting fully patched end-of-life SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series appliances. Google explained that the malware the hackers are using removes log entries, making it difficult to figure out how they initially gained access to a system. Google said the campaign extends beyond the incidents they investigated directly and added that SonicWall has "confirmed reports of other impacted organizations." The company noted that SonicWall updated an advisory for a bug tracked as CVE-2024-38475 in light of Google's findings. "As an added security measure, we strongly advise customers to reset the OTP (One-Time Password) binding for all users. This step ensures that any potentially compromised or stale OTP secrets are invalidated, thereby mitigating unauthorized access risks," SonicWall said in the update to the advisory..

One novel aspect of the campaign is the use of a backdoor called OVERSTEP, which modifies the SonicWall appliance's boot process to maintain persistent access, steal sensitive credentials and conceal the malware's own components. Incident responders struggled to track other activities by the hackers because OVERSTEP allowed them to delete logs and largely cover their tracks. OVERSTEP is specifically designed for SonicWall SMA 100 series appliances, according to Google. In addition to CVE-2024-38475, Google and Mandiant experts floated several potential vulnerabilities the hackers may have used to gain initial access, including CVE-2021-20038, CVE-2024-38475, CVE-2021-20035, CVE-2021-20039 and, CVE-2025-32819. Beyond those, Google theorized that the hackers may have used an unknown zero-day vulnerability to deploy the malware on targeted SonicWall SMA appliances.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2049256/google-spots-tailored-backdoor-malware-aimed-at-sonicwall-appliances?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The House passed a bipartisan bill regulating stablecoins which now heads to President Trump's desk as part of his push to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the world." Two other crypto-related bills -- one defining digital asset market structure and another banning a U.S. central bank digital currency -- were also approved by the House but face uncertain futures in the Senate amid partisan tensions and concerns over Trump's personal financial ties to crypto ventures. CNBC reports: The stablecoin bill, passed on a 308-122 vote, sets initial guardrails and consumer protections for the cryptocurrency, which is tied to a stable asset, often the U.S. dollar, to reduce price volatility. It passed the Senate with bipartisan support in June. "Around the world, payment systems are undergoing a revolution," said House Financial Services Chair French Hill of Arkansas as lawmakers debated the stablecoin legislation Thursday morning. Hill said the bill will "ensure American competitiveness and strong guardrails for our consumers."

After Trump declared it "crypto week," the bills were stalled for more than a day amid disagreements among House Republicans about how to combine the legislation. In the end, GOP leaders put the three bills for a separate votes, leaving the fate of the other two bills unclear in the Senate. The internal dissent could foreshadow challenges ahead for the more sweeping crypto legislation that Trump has demanded and the industry has poured millions into advancing. The stablecoin measure is seen by lawmakers and the industry as a step toward adding legitimacy and consumer trust to a rapidly growing sector. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in June that the legislation could help that currency "grow into a $3.7 trillion market by the end of the decade."

The bill outlines requirements for stablecoin issuers, including compliance with U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, and mandates that issuers hold reserves backing the cryptocurrency. Without such a framework, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee in a statement warned, "consumers face risks like unstable reserves or unclear operations from stablecoin issuers." After the votes, House Republicans strongly urged the Senate to take up the second bill, which would create a new market structure for cryptocurrency.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2321219/house-passes-historic-crypto-bill-regulating-stablecoins?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Dictionary.com abruptly deleted all user accounts and saved word lists from its premium apps without notice or refunds, leaving long-time logophiles "devastated." "The company deleted all accounts, as well as the only ways to use Dictionary.com without seeing ads -- even if you previously paid for an ad-free experience," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Dictionary.com offers a free dictionary through its website and free Android and iOS apps. It used to offer paid-for mobile apps, called Dictionary.com Pro, that let users set up accounts, use the app without ads, and enabled other features (like grammar tips and science and rhyming dictionaries) that are gone now. Dictionary.com's premium apps also let people download an offline dictionary (its free apps used to let you buy a downloadable dictionary as a one-time purchase), but offline the dictionaries aren't available anymore.

About a year ago, claims of Dictionary.com's apps being buggy surfaced online. We also found at least one person claiming that they were unable to buy an ad-free upgrade at that time. Reports of Dictionary.com accounts being deleted and the apps not working as expected, and with much of its content removed, started appearing online about two months ago. Users reported being unable to log in and access premium features, like saved words. Soon after, Dictionary.com's premium apps were removed from Google Play and Apple's App Store. The premium version was available for download for $6 as recently as March 23, per the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2329217/dictionarycom-devastated-paid-users-by-abruptly-deleting-saved-word-lists?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Ukrainian hacker group BO Team, with help from the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance and possibly Ukraine's military, claims to have wiped out one of Russia's largest military drone manufacturers, destroying 47TB of production data and even disabling the doors in the facility. "Or, as described by the hacking collective (per Google translate), they 'deeply penetrated' the drone manufacturer 'to the very tonsils of demilitarization and denazification,'" reports The Register. From the report: BO Team (also known as Black Owl) announced the breach on its Telegram channel, and claimed to have carried out the operation alongside fellow hackers the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance "and one very well-known organization, the mention of which makes Vanya's bottle receivers explode," according to a Google translation of the Russian text. While the "very well-known organization" isn't named, BO Team included a link to Ukraine's Ministry of Defence.

The military intelligence agency, working alongside the attackers, "carried out large-scale work to capture the entire network and server infrastructure of Gaskar Group, collect valuable information about the UAVs being produced and prospective, and then destroy the information and disable this infrastructure," the Telegram post continued. This reportedly included 47TB of technical information about the production of Russian drones, and BO Team claims to have destroyed all of the information on Gaskar's servers, including 10TB of backup files. "By the way, from the information we received, China is providing assistance in the production and training of specialists of Gaskar Group," the hackers added via Telegram. BO Team also posted what they claim to be confidential employee questionnaires [PDF].

On their own Telegram channel, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance said they also stole "all the source code" before destroying everything. "The network went down so thoroughly that the doors in the building were blocked," the pro-Ukraine crew wrote, per Google translate. "To open them, the administration had to turn on the fire alarm. Most likely, the defense order is on the verge of failure, and thousands of drones will not get to the front in the near future."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2350256/ukrainian-hackers-claim-to-have-destroyed-major-russian-drone-makers-entire-network?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google has filed a lawsuit to dismantle the sprawling Badbox 2.0 botnet, which infected over 10 million Android devices with pre-installed malware. Badbox 2.0 "is already the largest known botnet of internet-connected TV devices, and it grows each day. It has harmed millions of victims in the United States and around the world and threatens many more," Google said in its complaint. SecurityWeek reports: The internet giant cautions that, while it has been used mainly for fraud, the botnet could be used for more harmful types of cybercrime, such as ransomware or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In addition to pre-installing the malware on devices, Badbox 2.0's operators also tricked users into installing infected applications that provided them with further access to their personal devices, Google says. As part of their operation, the individuals behind Badbox 2.0 sold access to the infected devices to be used as residential proxies, and conducted ad fraud schemes by abusing these devices to create fake ad views or to exploit pay-per-click compensation models, the company continues. The internet giant also points out that this is the second global botnet the perpetrators have built, after the initial Badbox botnet was disrupted by German law enforcement in 2023.

According to Google, Badbox 2.0 is operated by multiple cybercrime groups from China, each having a different role in maintaining the botnet, such as establishing infrastructure, developing and pre-installing the malware on devices, and conducting fraud. "The BadBox 2.0 Enterprise includes several connected threat actor groups that design and implement complex criminal schemes targeting internet-connected devices both before and after the consumer receives the device," Google says. "While each member of the Enterprise plays a distinct role, they all collaborate to execute the BadBox 2.0 Scheme. All of the threat actor groups are connected to one another through the BadBox 2.0 shared C2 infrastructure and historical and current business ties," the company continues.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/18/2212220/google-sues-operators-of-10-million-device-badbox-20-botnet?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Intel has quietly pulled the plug on Clear Linux OS, officially ending support for the once-promising Linux distribution that it had backed for nearly a decade. Effective immediately, the company says it will no longer provide any updates, security patches, or maintenance for the operating system. In a final blow, the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository is now archived in read-only mode.

The move was announced with little fanfare, and for users still relying on Clear Linux OS, there's no sugarcoating it... you need to move on. Intel is urging everyone to migrate to an actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to avoid running unpatched software. "Rest assured that Intel remains deeply invested in the Linux ecosystem, actively supporting and contributing to various open-source projects and Linux distributions to enable and optimize for Intel hardware," the company said in a statement. "A heartfelt thank you to every developer, user, and contributor who helped shape Clear Linux OS over the last 10 years. Your feedback and contributions have been invaluable."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0016204/intel-kills-clear-linux-os-as-support-ends-without-warning?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Live Science: In a world first, scientists have demonstrated an enigmatic phenomenon in quantum computing that could pave the way for fault-tolerant machines that are far more powerful than any supercomputer. The process, called "magic state distillation," was first proposed 20 years ago, but its use in logical qubits has eluded scientists ever since. It has long been considered crucial for producing the high-quality resources, known as "magic states," needed to fulfill the full potential of quantum computers. [...] Now, however, scientists with QuEra say they have demonstrated magic state distillation in practice for the first time on logical qubits. They outlined their findings in a new study published July 14 in the journal Nature.

In the study, using the Gemini neutral-atom quantum computer, the scientists distilled five imperfect magic states into a single, cleaner magic state. They performed this separately on a Distance-3 and a Distance-5 logical qubit, demonstrating that it scales with the quality of the logical qubit. "A greater distance means better logical qubits. A Distance-2, for instance, means that you can detect an error but not correct it. Distance-3 means that you can detect and correct a single error. Distance-5 would mean that you can detect and correct up to two errors, and so on, and so on," [explained Yuval Boger, chief commercial officer at QuEra who was not personally involved in the research]. "So the greater the distance, the higher fidelity of the qubit is -- and we liken it to distilling crude oil into a jet fuel."

As a result of the distillation process, the fidelity of the final magic state exceeded that of any input. This proved that fault-tolerant magic state distillation worked in practice, the scientists said. This means that a quantum computer that uses both logical qubits and high-quality magic states to run non-Clifford gates is now possible. "We're seeing sort of a shift from a few years ago," Boger said. "The challenge was: can quantum computers be built at all? Then it was: can errors be detected and corrected? Us and Google and others have shown that, yes, that can be done. Now it's about: can we make these computers truly useful? And to make one computer truly useful, other than making them larger, you want them to be able to run programs that cannot be simulated on classical computers."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/18/2223220/scientists-make-magic-state-breakthrough-after-20-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

At Sotheby's Geek Week auction, the largest known Martian meteorite on Earth sold for a record-breaking $5.3 million. The Associated Press reports: The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby's. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million. The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official sale price was about $5.3 million, making it the most valuable meteorite ever sold at auction, Sotheby's said.

The live bidding was slow, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the minimum bid increases. [...] The bidding for the Mars meteorite began with two advance offers of $1.9 million and $2 million. The live bidding slowly proceeded with increases of $200,000 and $300,000 until $4 million, then continued with $100,000 increases until reaching $4.3 million. The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby's says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters). It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/18/2228201/largest-piece-of-mars-on-earth-fetches-53-million-at-auction?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft will stop using China-based engineers to support U.S. military cloud services after a ProPublica report revealed their involvement, prompting backlash from Senator Tom Cotton and a two-week Pentagon review ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In response, Hegseth announced an immediate ban on any Chinese involvement in Department of Defense cloud contracts. Reuters reports: The report detailed Microsoft's use of Chinese engineers to work on U.S. military cloud computing systems under the supervision of U.S. "digital escorts" hired through subcontractors who have security clearances but often lacked the technical skills to assess whether the work of the Chinese engineers posed a cybersecurity threat. [Microsoft] told ProPublica it disclosed its practices to the U.S. government during an authorization process.

On Friday, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw said on social media website X the company changed how it supports U.S. government customers "in response to concerns raised earlier this week ... to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance" for services used by the Pentagon.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0028202/microsoft-to-stop-using-engineers-in-china-for-tech-support-of-us-military?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: California Forever announced on Thursday plans to build a massive manufacturing park called Solano Foundry, the newest addition to its master-planned "utopian" city backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires. Solano Foundry is 2,100 acres that can host 40 million square feet of advanced tech manufacturing space. The manufacturing park will be built as part of its planned walkable city with over 175,000 homes, CEO Jan Sramek said at the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit.

Sramek tweeted that U.S. manufacturers can't win by "building factories off of random freeway exits in the middle of nowhere. The best people don't want to work there." This site will offer expedited permitting, transportation for finished goods, and plenty of power from renewable energy, he said. The hope is that it will attract hardware, engineering, and AI talent from relatively nearby Silicon Valley. Solano County is about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0022209/utopian-city-california-forever-announces-huge-tech-manufacturing-park?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Felix Baumgartner has died. He was 56.
In 2012 Slashdot extensively covered the skydiver's "leap from the edge of space."

ABC News remembers it as a Red Bull-financed stunt that involved "diving 24 miles from the edge of space, in a plummet that reached a speed of more than 500 mph."

Baumgartner recalled the legendary jump in the documentary, "Space Jump," and said, "I was the first human being outside of an aircraft breaking the speed of sound and the history books. Nobody remembers the second one...."
Baumgartner, also known as "Fearless Felix," accomplished many records in his career, including setting the world record for highest parachute jump atop the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, flying across the English Channel in a wingsuit in 2003, and base jumping from the 85-foot arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil in 2007.

"Baumgartner's altitude record stood for two years," remembers the Los Angeles Times, "until Google executive Alan Eustace set new marks for the highest free-fall jump and greatest free-fall distance."

They report that Baumgartner died Thursday "while engaged in a far less intense activity, crashing into the side of a hotel swimming pool while paragliding in Porto Sant Elpidio, a town on central Italy's eastern coast." More details from the Associated Press:

"It is a destiny that is very hard to comprehend for a man who has broke all kinds of records, who has been an icon of flight, and who traveled through space," Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella told The Associated Press.Ciarpella said that Baumgartner had been in the area on vacation, and that investigators believed he may have fallen ill during the fatal flight... Baumgartner, a former Austrian military parachutist, made thousands of jumps from planes, bridges, skyscrapers and famed landmarks...

ABC News remembers that in 2022 Baumgartner wrote in Newsweek that "Since I was a little kid, I've always looked up to people who left a footprint on this planet... now I think I have left a footprint...
"I believe big dreamers always win."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0336250/edge-of-space-skydiver-felix-baumgartner-dies-in-paragliding-accident?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Independent notes a remarkable-if-true figure that's being bandied around this week.

Meta "started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his brother Jack on his podcast. "You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year... I'm really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that."

Previous reports have also suggested that Meta is targeting employees at Google DeepMind, offering similar levels of compensation. Some of these efforts appear to have been successful, with DeepMind researcher Jack Rae joining Meta's 'Superintelligence' team earlier this month...

During the podcast, which was published on Tuesday, Mr Altman also gave details about future AI products that OpenAI is hoping to build, claiming that they will enable "crazy new social experiences" and "virtual employees". The most important breakthrough over the next decade, he said, would involve radical new discoveries powered by AI. "The thing that I think will be the most impactful in that five-to-10 year timeframe is AI will actually discover new science," he said.
The Washington Post notes that Zuckerberg "responded to recent reports of his compensation offers in an interview posted by the Information on YouTube on Tuesday, saying that 'a lot of the numbers specifically have been inaccurate" but acknowledging there is "an absolute premium for the best and most talented people."

Zuckerberg's recent hires and other comments this week suggest he's not taking any chances of being left behind. He announced plans for a giant data center campus large enough to obscure Manhattan to power future AI projects by his superintelligence team.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0612203/openai-ceo-says-meta-tried-poaching-chatgpt-engineers-with-100m-bonuses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Commodore has returned from a parallel timeline where tech stayed optimistic, inviting, and human," explains the official web site for "the first real Commodore computer in over 30 years..." You can check out an ad for it here. "Not an emulator. Not a PC... Powered by a FPGA recreation of the original motherboard, wrapped in glowing game-reactive LEDs (or classic beige of course)."

Fast Company calls it "a $299 device that its makers claim is compatible with over 10,000 retro games, cartridges, and peripherals." In a YouTube video posted last month, "Peri Fractic" said he'd purchased the company for "a low seven-figure sum," and said he'd recruited several former Commodore employees to help relaunch the brand.

The new C64s are expected to begin shipping as early as October, though that date could slip... There are three models to choose from, all with the same internal components. If you were expecting a vastly outdated machine, however, you're in for a surprise. The Commodore 64 Ultimate will include 128 megabytes of RAM and 16 megabytes of flash memory. It connects to modern monitors via HDMI in high-definition 1080p resolution and features three USB-A ports and one USB-C port. Beyond the computer itself, the power source, and HDMI cable, your $299 also gets you a spiral-bound user guide, a 64-gigabyte USB drive featuring over 50 licensed games, a quick-start guide, and stickers.
Aesthetically, the Commodore 64 Ultimate is available in the original beige or in premium variants: the Starlight Edition, with a clear case and LED lights ($249), or the Founder's Edition, which includes 24-karat gold-plated badges, satin gold keys, and a translucent amber case ($499). Just 6,400 units of the Founder's Edition will be produced, according to the company. The preorder setup resembles a Kickstarter campaign, though it doesn't use that platform. Commodore says all preorders come with a money-back guarantee, but it chose to skip the service's fees. Buyers should be aware that accounts are charged at the time of preorder...

The product will come with a one-year limited warranty, and Commodore says most parts are already in production, including the updated motherboard, the case, and the keycaps that recreate the blocky keys that early users remember.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0528234/after-30-years-you-can-buy-a-new-commodore-64-ultimate-for-299?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"The U.S. is absolutely facing the most serious Chinese hacking ever." That's what the Washington Post was told by a China-focused consultant at security company SentinelOne:

Undeterred by recent indictments alleging widespread cyberespionage against American agencies, journalists and infrastructure targets, Chinese hackers are hitting a wider range of targets and battling harder to stay inside once detected, seven current and former U.S. officials said in interviews. Hacks from suspected Chinese government actors detected by the security firm CrowdStrike more than doubled from 2023 to more than 330 last year and continued to climb as the new administration took over, the company said... Although the various Chinese hacking campaigns seem to be led by different government agencies and have different goals, all benefit from new techniques and from Beijing's introduction of a less constrained system for cyber offense, the officials and outside researchers told The Washington Post... Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies previously selected targets and tasked their own employees with breaking in, they said. But the Chinese government decided to take a more aggressive approach by allowing private industry to conduct cyberattacks and hacking campaigns on their own, U.S. officials said.

The companies are recruiting top hackers who discover previously unknown, or "zero-day," flaws in software widely used in the United States. Then the companies search for where the vulnerable programs are installed, hack a great many of them at once, and then sell access to multiple Chinese government customers and other security companies. That hacking-for-hire approach creates hundreds of U.S. victims instead of a few, making it hard to block attacks and to decide which were China's key targets and which were unintentionally caught in the hacks, an FBI official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to follow agency practices... "The result of that incentive structure is that there is significantly more hacking...."

China has mastered the ability to move undetected through networks of compromised U.S. devices, so that the final connection to a target appears to be an ordinary domestic connection. That makes it easy to get around technology that blocks overseas links and puts it outside the purview of the National Security Agency, which by law must avoid scrutinizing most domestic transmissions. Beijing is increasingly focused on hacking software and security vendors that provide access to many customers at once, the FBI official said. Once access is obtained, the hackers typically add new email and collaboration accounts that look legitimate... Beyond the increased government collaboration with China's private security sector is occasional collaborating with criminal groups, said Ken Dunham, an analyst at the security firm Qualys.

The article notes that China's penetration of U.S. telecom carriers "is still not fully contained, according to the current and former officials." But in addition, the group behind that attack "has more recently shown up inside core communications infrastructure in Europe, according to John Carlin, a former top national security official in the Justice Department who represents some U.S. victims of the group." And documents leaked last year from a security contractor that works with the Chinese military and other government groups "described contracts and targets in 20 countries, with booty including Indian immigration data, logs of calls in South Korea, and detailed information on roads in Taiwan.
"It also detailed prices for some services, such as $25,000 for promised remote access to an iPhone, payment disputes with government customers and employee gripes about long hours..."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0659227/chinese-companies-now-authorized-to-conduct-foreign-cyberattacks-sell-access-to-government?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

ABC News reports:

Dialogue heard on a cockpit voice recording indicates that the captain of the Air India flight that crashed in June, killing 260 people, may have turned off the fuel just after takeoff, prompting the first officer to panic, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with U.S. official's early assessment... The president of the Federation of Indian Pilots condemned the Wall Street Journal report, saying, "The preliminary report nowhere states that the pilots have moved the fuel control switches, and this has been corroborated by the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] recording."

But meanwhile "India on Monday ordered its airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing aircraft models," reports Reuters, "while South Korea ordered a similar measure on Tuesday, as scrutiny intensified of fuel switch locks at the centre of an investigation into a deadly Air India crash."

The precautionary moves by the two countries and airlines in several others came despite the planemaker and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration assuring airlines and regulators in recent days that the fuel switch locks on Boeing jets are safe... [The preliminary report] noted a 2018 advisory from the FAA, which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, to inspect the locking feature of fuel cutoff switches to ensure they could not be moved accidentally... Some airlines around the world told Reuters they had been checking relevant switches since 2018 in accordance with the FAA advisory, including Australia's Qantas Airways. Others said they had made additional or new checks since the release of the preliminary report into the Air India crash.

The web site of India's Financial Express newspaper spoke to Mary Schiavo, who was Inspector General of America's Transportation Department from 1990 to 1996 (and is also a long-time critic of the FAA). The site notes Schiavo "rejected the claims of human error that a pilot downed the Ahmedabad to London flight by cutting off the fuel supply."

Schiavo exclusively told FinancialExpress.com that this is not the first time fuel switch transitioned from "Run" to "Cutoff" on its own. It happened five years ago, too. "There was an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight in 2019 in which the 787 aircraft did this itself, while the flight was on final approach. No pilot input cutting off the fuel whatsoever," Schiavo told FinancialExpress.com... "The investigation revealed the plane software made the 787 think it was on the ground and the Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation System cut the fuel to the engines," she told FinancialExpress.com, before adding, "The pilots never touched the fuel cutoff..." Both engines flamed out immediately after the pilot deployed the thrust reversers for landing. The aircraft, which was also a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, was towed away from the runway by the authorities, and no injuries were reported.
UK Civil Aviation Authority, four weeks before the crash, had warned about similar fuel system issues on Boeing aircraft [on May 15, 2025]. "The FAA has issued an Airworthiness Directive addressing a potential unsafe condition affecting fuel shutoff valves installed on Boeing aircraft," the UK regulator's notice read, listing the B737, B757, B767, B777 and B787...
Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation informs FADEC [a digital computer] about whether the aircraft is on the ground or in the air, and if it believes the aircraft is on the ground, it may automatically throttle back the engines, without the pilot's input.

Reuters notes that the Air India crash preliminary report "said maintenance records showed that the throttle control module, which includes the fuel switches, was replaced in 2019 and 2023 on the plane involved in the crash."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/168254/boeing-fuel-switches-checked-as-critic-cites-a-similar-fuel-switch-cutoff-in-2019?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Historian Garrett M. Graff describes his upcoming book, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb. "I assembled an oral history of the Manhattan Project, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II in the Pacific, told through the voices of around 500 participants and witnesses of the events — including luminaries like Albert Einstein and Oppenheimer and political figures like President Harry Truman."

It was 80 years ago this week that physicists and 150 other leaders in the atomic bomb program "gathered in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the world's first test of a nuclear explosion." In an except from his upcoming book, Graff publishes quotes from eyewitness:

Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. He had also said that after all it wouldn't make any difference whether the bomb went off or not because it would still have been a well worthwhile scientific experiment. For if it did fail to go off, we would have proved that an atomic explosion was not possible. Afterward, I realized that his talk had served to smooth down the frayed nerves and ease the tension of the people at the base camp, and I have always thought that this was his conscious purpose. Certainly, he himself showed no signs of tension that I could see...

As the hour approached, we had to postpone the test — first for an hour and then later for 30 minutes more — so that the explosion was actually three- and one-half hours behind the original schedule... Our preparations were simple. Everyone was told to lie face down on the ground, with his feet toward the blast, to close his eyes and to cover his eyes with his hands as the countdown approached zero. As soon as they became aware of the flash they could turn over and sit or stand up, covering their eyes with the smoked glass with which each had been supplied... The quiet grew more intense. I, myself, was on the ground between Bush and Conant...
Edward Teller: We all were lying on the ground, supposedly with our backs turned to the explosion. But I had decided to disobey that instruction and instead looked straight at the bomb. I was wearing the welder's glasses that we had been given so that the light from the bomb would not damage our eyes. But because I wanted to face the explosion, I had decided to add some extra protection. I put on dark glasses under the welder's glasses, rubbed some ointment on my face to prevent sunburn from the radiation, and pulled on thick gloves to press the welding glasses to my face to prevent light from entering at the sides... We all listened anxiously as the broadcast of the final countdown started; but, for whatever reason, the transmission ended at minus five seconds...

Kenneth T. Bainbridge: My personal nightmare was knowing that if the bomb didn't go off or hang-fired, I, as head of the test, would have to go to the tower first and seek to find out what had gone wrong...

Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead.

A few examples of how they remembered the explosion:

William L. Laurence: There rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: I felt the heat on the back of my neck, disturbingly warm.
George B. Kistiakowsky: I am sure that at the end of the world — in the last millisecond of the earth's existence — the last man will see what we have just seen.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Oppenheimer's face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried.
Norris Bradbury, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind. I didn't. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.

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Electronic messages travel faster than seismic waves, Gizmodo points out — meaning some people near an earthquake receive an Android Earthquake Alert "before the seismic waves reach them — and even a few seconds could be just enough time to hide under a table or run outside."

Richard Allen from the University of California in Berkeley's Seismological Laboratory, writes in a new study that "The global adoption of smartphone technology places sophisticated sensing and alerting capabilities in people's hands, in both the wealthy and less-wealthy portions of the planet."

From Gizmodo:

According to the study, 70% of the world's smartphones are Android phones, which by default come with the aforementioned sensing and alerting capabilities. From 2021 to 2024, the Android Earthquake Alert (AEA) system detected an average of 312 earthquakes per month across 98 countries. The earthquakes had a magnitude between 1.9 and 7.8, and the system alerted users of earthquakes at or over a magnitude of 4.5, averaging around 60 events and 18 million alerts per month. The AEA system also collected user feedback, revealing that 85% of users who received alerts experienced shaking, with 36% receiving the alert before, 28% during, and 23% after the shaking began...
"AEA demonstrates that globally distributed smartphones can be used to detect earthquakes and issue warnings at scale with an effectiveness comparable to established national systems," the researchers wrote.
The system detected 11,231 earthquakes between April of 2021 and March of 2024, according to the study, which notes that the length of the advanced warning "ranged from seconds up to a minute" for moderate shaking, and about 15 seconds for the strongest shaking.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/1934209/android-phones-can-detect-earthquakes-before-the-ground-starts-shaking?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
Ships trigger seafloor methane emissions while moving through shallow water, researchers report in Communications Earth & Environment. The scientists say the unexpected discovery has nothing to do with the type of fuel used by the ship. Instead, "ship-induced pressure changes and turbulent mixing" trigger the release of the gas from the seafloor. Bubbles and gas diffusion push the methane into the atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas...

Container and cruise ships triggered the largest and most frequent methane emissions, but the study suggests that ships of all kinds, regardless of their type of engine or size, trigger methane emissions. Researchers said they observed emissions that were 20 times higher in the shipping lane than in undisturbed nearby areas. Given the number of ports in similarly shallow areas worldwide, it's important to learn more about emissions in shipping lanes and to better estimate their "hitherto unknown impact," study co-author Johan Mellqvist, a professor of optical remote sensing at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, said in a news release.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/1958211/in-shallow-water-ships-trigger-seafloor-methane-emissions-study-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Nearly 2 million people protected their privacy by deleting their DNA from 23andMe after it declared bankruptcy in March," writes a Washington Post technology columnist.

"Now it's back with the same person in charge — and I still don't trust it."

As of this week, genetic data from the more than 10 million remaining 23andMe customers has been formally sold to an organization called TTAM Research Institute for $305 million. That nonprofit is run by the person who co-founded and ran 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki. In a recent email to customers, the new 23andMe said it "will be operating with the same employees and privacy protocols that have protected your data." Never mind that Wojcicki and her privacy protocols are what put your DNA at risk in the first place...

The company is legally obligated to maintain and honor 23andMe's existing privacy policies, user consents and data protection measures. And as part of a settlement with states, TTAM also agreed to provide annual privacy reports to state regulators and set up a privacy board. But it hasn't agreed to take the fundamental step of asking for permission to acquire existing customers' genetic information. And it's leaving the door open to selling people's genes to the highest bidder again in the future...

Existing 23andMe customers have the right to delete their data or opt out of TTAM's research. But the new company is not asking for opt-in permission before it takes ownership of customers' DNA... Why does that matter? Because people who handed over the DNA 15 years ago, often to learn about their genetic ancestry, never imagined it might be used in this way now. Asking for new permission might significantly shrink the size (and value) of 23andMe's DNA database — but it would be the right thing to do given the rocky history. Neil M. Richards [the Washington University professor who served as privacy ombudsman for the bankruptcy court], pointed out that about a third of 23andMe customers haven't logged in for at least three years, so they may have no idea what is going on. Some 23andMe users never even clicked "agree" on a legal agreement that allowed their data to be sold like this; the word "bankruptcy" wasn't added to the company's privacy policy until 2022. And then there is an unknown number of deceased users who most certainly can't consent, but whose DNA still has an impact on their living genetic relatives...

[S]everal states have argued that their existing genetic privacy laws don't allow 23andMe to receive the information without getting permission from every single person. Virginia has an ongoing lawsuit over the issue, and the California attorney general's office told me it "will continue to fight to protect and vindicate the rights" of consumers....

Two more points of concern:

"There is nothing in 23andMe's bankruptcy agreement or privacy statement to prevent TTAM from selling or transferring DNA to some other organization in the future."
The article also notes a 2023 data breach affecting 6.9 million users, arguing "They haven't shown they can keep your data safe... 23andMe's financial struggles could make it hard to run a robust cybersecurity program."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/19/0252236/23andmes-data-sold-to-nonprofit-run-by-its-co-founder---and-i-still-dont-trust-it?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

It's "a milestone for scalable quantum technologies," according to the announcement from Boston University. Scientists from Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University "reported the world's first electronic-photonic-quantum system on a chip, according to a study published in Nature Electronics."

Quantum computing is on "a decades-long path from concept to reality," says Milos PopoviÄ, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at BU and a senior author on the study. "This is a small step on that path — but an important one, because it shows we can build repeatable, controllable quantum systems in commercial semiconductor foundries."

The system combines quantum light sources and stabilizing electronics using a standard 45-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process to produce reliable streams of correlated photon pairs (particles of light) — a key resource for emerging quantum technologies. The advance paves the way for mass-producible "quantum light factory" chips and large-scale quantum systems built from many such chips working together...

Just as electronic chips are powered by electric currents, and optical communication links by laser light, future quantum technologies will require a steady stream of quantum light resource units to perform their functions. To provide this, the researchers' work created an array of "quantum light factories" on a silicon chip, each less than a millimeter by a millimeter in dimension... "What excites me most is that we embedded the control directly on-chip — stabilizing a quantum process in real time," says Anirudh Ramesh, a PhD student at Northwestern who led the quantum measurements. "That's a critical step toward scalable quantum systems."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/20/0042202/first-electronic-photonic-quantum-chip-created-in-commercial-foundry?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"I vibe coded a little game called Coldplay Canoodlers," reads the X.com post by gaming enthusiast/songwriter Jonathan Mann. "You're the camera operator and you have to find the CEO and HR lady canoodling. 10 points every time you find them."

Mann's post includes a 30-second clip from the game, which is playable here.

Forbes notes that the TikTok video of the couple's reaction has drawn more than 100 million views — and that the married-to-someone-else CEO has now tendered his resignation from his dataops company Astronomer (which was accepted). The company is now searching for a new chief executive, according to a statement posted on LinkedIn. ("Comments have been turned off on this post...")

"Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met."

But songwriter Mann saw a chance to have some fun, writes Forbes:

Mann used ChatGPT to make the "Coldplay Canoodlers" game, inputting such prompts as: "Can you generate an 8-bit pixel image of a stadium concert viewed from the stage" and "there should be a large jumbotron somewhere up in the stadium seats." He also entered rough drawings of the visual style he envisioned... The response to the game, Mann said in an interview, has been unexpected. "I have gone viral many times with my songs," he said. It's "very strange to have it happen with a game I made in four hours."
Songwriter Mann has been sharing an original song online every day for over 17 years. Last summer Slashdot also covered Mann's attempts to sell NFTs of his songs, and his concerns about SEC regulations. (This led him to file a real-world legal challenge — and to write a song titled "I'm Suing the SEC".) So with all the attention this weekend to his instant game, there was nothing to do but... write a new song about it.
And minutes ago on X.com, Mann also posted a new update about his game.

"I turned it into an NFT."

"Took some time," Mann explained later. "But I vibe coded my own ERC-721 contract and minted the game as a playable NFT. (Plays great on OpenSea)."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/07/20/0219213/that-coldplay-kiss-cam-couple-just-became-a-vibe-coded-videogame---and-then-an-nft?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Eight healthy babies were born in Britain," reports Phys.org, "with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported Wednesday."

Mutations in mitochondrial DNA "can cause a range of diseases in children that can lead to muscle weakness, seizures, developmental delays, major organ failure and death," and in rare cases even pre-IVF testing can't clearly detect their presence.

Researchers have been developing a technique that tries to avoid the problem by using the healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. They reported in 2023 that the first babies had been born using this method... Using this method means the embryo has DNA from three people — from the mother's egg, the father's sperm and the donor's mitochondria — and it required a 2016 U.K. law change to approve it. It is also allowed in Australia but not in many other countries, including the U.S. Experts at Britain's Newcastle University and Monash University in Australia reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday that they performed the new technique in fertilized embryos from 22 patients, which resulted in eight babies that appear to be free of mitochondrial diseases. One woman is still pregnant...

Robin Lovell-Badge [a stem cell and developmental genetics scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the research] said the amount of DNA from the donor is insignificant, noting that any resulting child would have no traits from the woman who donated the healthy mitochondria...

In the U.K., every couple seeking a baby born through donated mitochondria must be approved by the country's fertility regulator. As of this month, 35 patients have been authorized to undergo the technique. Critics have previously raised concerns, warning that it's impossible to know the impact these sorts of novel techniques might have on future generations... But in countries where the technique is allowed, advocates say it could provide a promising alternative for some families.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/20/0328203/healthy-babies-born-in-britain-after-scientists-used-dna-from-three-people-to-avoid-genetic-disease?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Twitter co-founder/Block CEO Jack Dorsey isn't just vibe coding new apps like Bitchat and Sun Day. He's also "invested $10 million in an effort to fund experimental open source projects and other tools that could ultimately transform the social media landscape," reports TechCrunch," funding the projects through an online collective formed in May called "andOtherStuff:

[T]he team at "andOtherStuff" is determined not to build a company but is instead operating like a "community of hackers," explains Evan Henshaw-Plath [who handles UX/onboarding and was also Twitter's first employee]. Together, they're working to create technologies that could include new consumer social apps as well as various experiments, like developer tools or libraries, that would allow others to build apps for themselves.

For instance, the team is behind an app called Shakespeare, which is like the app-building platform Lovable, but specifically for building Nostr-based social apps with AI assistance. The group is also behind heynow, a voice note app built on Nostr; Cashu wallet; private messenger White Noise; and the Nostr-based social community +chorus, in addition to the apps Dorsey has already released. Developments in AI-based coding have made this type of experimentation possible, Henshaw-Plath points out, in the same way that technologies like Ruby on Rails, Django, and JSON helped to fuel an earlier version of the web, dubbed Web 2.0.

Related to these efforts, Henshaw-Plath sat down with Dorsey for the debut episode of his new podcast, revolution.social with @rabble... Dorsey believes Bluesky faces the same challenges as traditional social media because of its structure — it's funded by VCs, like other startups. Already, it has had to bow to government requests and faced moderation challenges, he points out. "I think [Bluesky CEO] Jay [Graber] is great. I think the team is great," Dorsey told Henshaw-Plath, "but the structure is what I disagree with ... I want to push the energy in a different direction, which is more like Bitcoin, which is completely open and not owned by anyone from a protocol layer...."

Dorsey's initial investment has gotten the new nonprofit up and running, and he worked on some of its initial iOS apps. Meanwhile, others are contributing their time to build Android versions, developer tools, and different social media experiments. More is still in the works, says Henshaw-Plath.

"There are things that we're not ready to talk about yet that'll be very exciting," he teases.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/20/058235/jack-dorsey-pumps-10m-into-a-nonprofit-focused-on-open-source-social-media?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Feature work on Plasma 6.5 this week includes "a major visual change that has been years in the wanting," according to the KDE blog: "rounded bottom corners for windows!"
Neowin reports:
This visual refresh, planned for the upcoming Plasma 6.5, is a feature that many users have been asking for over a long period, with a formal proposal even being submitted back in 2021.
Its official arrival will mean less need for community-developed workarounds like kde-rounded-corners, a popular third-party script that has served this purpose for years. The feature will be enabled by default, but it includes an option for those who prefer the classic, sharp-cornered look.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/20/0119236/kde-plasma-finally-gets-rounded-bottom-window-corners?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.